thGryphn said:@Zaxx, MMH5.5 is obviously not for you. Just stay away, be happy elsewhere, instead of pulling everyone else down with you here.

If a simple opinion is pulling you down then I think it's not me who's acting emotional here.

It's not a simple opinion you're presenting. You're bashing an immense, thought-through, expert-player-tested mod with flat-out rude, ignorant and childish choice of words. While you could simply say that you don't like MMH5.5 because it doesn't make your life easy playing the original campaigns, you come out as if you're on a crusade against the mod. You lack respect, and nobody shall have it for you here. Bye.

So apparently I should respect strangers and a negative opinion is childish per definitionem. Gotcha, chief, just stay in your bubble (and by that I mean the countless threads dedicated to H5.5 instead of this one, you won't see me commenting there) and don't speak to me ever again, please.

Edit: Btw. I'm not on a crusade against the mod, it's just the nature of the discussion that when I get asked about something I don't like I'll have an opinion on why I don't like that thing. You guys brought up a lot of things I happen to dislike about H5.5, not me, I just said that you shouldn't play the campaigns with it (and interestingly enough to some extent both of you admitted that that is indeed the case).

@Zaxx: You keep consistently using phrases like 'useless garbage' and now 'don't speak to me ever again' which is clear evidence of the emotional state you are in when sitting behind your PC.

I did not say you are a bad player, you said you wanted easily defeatable armies and I pointed you to the most appropriate difficulty. The normal difficulty was designed for 'regular players' not 'bad players'.

The easy difficulty was removed because early in the development process of my mod it was targeted more narrowly to advanced players, but as the fanbase grew I got complaints about the difficulty so I made the casual game option 'more casual' and also added an option to handicap the AI in the H55 settings file.

Quote:I just said that you shouldn't play the campaigns with it (and interestingly enough to some extent both of you admitted that that is indeed the case).

..and that's where you are wrong.

EDIT: It is also relevant to point out that from the perspective of H55 the orc mission is actually the start of the 10th campaign so there is no reason for it to be easy. Only the queen campaign needs to be tutorial level.
____________MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ

magnomagus said:@Zaxx: You keep consistently using phrases like 'useless garbage' and now 'don't speak to me ever again' which is clear evidence of the emotional state you are in when sitting behind your PC.

Or you know, maybe I just like to employ brutal honesty when voicing an opinion simply because I don't like to waste time with beating around the bush. I did not state that H5.5 is useless garbage, I stated that it's useless garbage if you want to have an enjoyable experience with the campaigns and I think I provided a fairly adequate argument to support that statement.

Quote:I did not say you are a bad player, you said you wanted easily defeatable armies and I pointed you to the most appropriate difficulty.

I did not say that I wanted easily defeatable armies, I said that in order for the mission to work the army should be defeatable because otherwise you're in a deficit you can't overcome at the end because you have no town to recruit reinforcements while the AI has access to an almost fully built one. The argument that H5.5's AI makes the game harder because the AI is smarter is not really relevant since missions such as the first mission of ToTE don't provide a real tactical challenge, they are simple "adventure missions" where you're supposed to focus on defeating neutral stacks with minimal losses and if you fulfill that requirement than the player should not be punished by meeting a large, undefeatable army right at the end of the level. A hero stack that is reported as "challenging" is usually an army you can't overcome with a low level hero and it mostly equals to a "deadly" configuration. On a regular mission where you have at least one town and you have a choice you don't start battles with stacks like that because even if you manage to win you'll still suffer crippling losses.

With the regular AI that army is supposed to be "moderate" at strenght even on heroic and there is a good reason for that: depending on the stuff the AI gets access to through the RNG there is a good chance that you won't be able to finish the map if the army is significantly stronger than that. If there is a chance that you won't be able to finish the map even if you're playing in the most optimal way then the map is broken, ergo H5.5's AI breaks the campaigns, ergo H5.5 is useless garbage for a campaign player. I don't know why this is so hard to get and I really have no idea why you as the creator of the mod have to hide behind a childish "git gud" argument instead of getting this point... and the fact that there are people who can complete the map by being lucky is not an argument. "Possible" does not equal "balanced" if the chances of the positive outcome being possible are very low.

God, I don't even want to imagine how messed up Conquest or The Defense is with H5.5's advanced AI.

Quote:as the fanbase grew I got complaints about the difficulty

I don't want to burst your bubble but chances are you got complaints because the game is simply not balanced in some cases. Let's face it: if you want true, tough as nails tactical depth you won't play Heroes, a game that is still an RPG in heart because heroes affect their armies in very significant ways and their progression is partially based around RNG. For Heroes 6 or 7 it could be possible because there apart from choosing a specific hero you have perfect control of your progression but Heroes 5 was not designed that way. Hell, if you set H5.5's AI to impossible, you create a random map and sit down the best Heroes player in the world to play it there is a chance that he won't have a shot at winning thanks to the RNG... just think about how bad that game design is.

Quote:It is also relevant to point out that from the perspective of H55 the orc mission is actually the start of the 10th campaign so there is no reason for it to be easy.

Fair enough but chances are that apart from the first mission (where there is no enemy AI on the map so H5.5's changes to the AI are not even relevan) even the Queen campaign is next to impossible to complete with H5.5's AI... and with the AI-less missions in mind just think about the gigantic difficulty inconsistency you've created in the campaigns, especially since that inconsistency was already a noticeable problem in the original campaigns.

magnomagus said:
First of all this is already nonsense because the mod also offers the option to play the campaigns with the old unmodified AI alongside all the other enhancements not related to difficulty.

I meant the AI all the way through but you're right, I should have been more thorough with my explanation. Does that include the new artifacts and other expanded stuff btw.?

Quote:Secondly since you are the only one complaining to this extent about the advanced AI after it was downloaded by around 5000 people and out for more than a year.

So far I did not respond to this kind of information because I have a problem with putting this stuff into context. Was it downloaded by 5000 people or 5000 times (I sure as hell downloaded the mod at least 4 times in the last few months )? How many of those people gave you feedback? How many of them played the campaigns? This stuff needs to be a lot more specific to be considered relevant and useful information.

Anyway from the general reception of the mod I know that the extent to which I'm seemingly bashing it is not realistic so I'd like to remind you that I'm bashing it from one very specific aspect. Also I really hope that even if you don't appreciate the style I prefer to write my opinions in you can sense the intent of constructivity... because honestly that's totally there. Overall I think that the community needs projects like H5.5 and the only think I'm hoping to get with this discussion is for your to at least re-evaluate your design intentions when it comes to the campaigns of H5. Nival sadly did not finish the job properly so eventually someone has to do it.

All gameplay elements such as new artifacts and skillwheel will obviously spill over to the campaign.

It was downloaded more than 10000 times, so I only consider less than half of them. I have had feedback from more then 100 forum users and 35 reviews on moddb mostly giving it 10/10. Nonetheless I file all complaints including yours and wait to see if there is any followup on them. There was also a guy streaming the h55 campaign on youtube and I fixed some issues along the way.
____________MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ

10/10 doesn't necessarily include campaign experience.
If a person is willing to write a review, chances are he was playing this mod after beating the campaigns on semi-vanilla set-up. A person without a prior homm5 experience would just drop the mod (and probably the game too) after encountering a problem in the campaign, without writing anything.

I know, but speculating what single individuals do with the mod is pointless. I know if there are issues, there will be complaints. Earlier in the process there were plenty of complaints about both the campaigns and other stuff, nowadays I hardly hear anything and download activity is higher than it was back then.
____________MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ

to be honest if one wants a particularly good campaign for Heroes 5 one would have to make one because none currently exist, IMO to do it properly it would require tools that nobody has made yet such as a model editor (to update the terrible graphics) so people's hands are a bit tied lol
____________

verriker said:to be honest if one wants a particularly good campaign for Heroes 5 one would have to make one because none currently exist, IMO to do it properly it would require tools that nobody has made yet such as a model editor (to update the terrible graphics) so people's hands are a bit tied lol

I don't think H5's campaigns are that bad overall, it's just that some parts of it can ruin the whole thing.

The first one is not excellent but perfectly serviceable as an introductory campaign (it really isn't much worse than Long Live the Queen in H3).

The Inferno campaign is well... it's as bad as it gets (not much actual inferno gameplay going on, bad or generic maps, bad mission design, Conquest's huge difficulty spike and I'm sure that the list goes on) but the last mission redeems it, it's the best "adventure" mission in the whole game.

The necro campaign is just great in my opinion: Markal is basically the only enjoyable character in the whole game but he's a joy to listen to, I love the campy voice acting that is going on there and the campaign itself is a great remake of the H3 RoE necro campaign. Good maps, every single one of them and it's a rare part in the game where the Ashan lore feels interesting.

Dungeon: another really good one though it doesn't have much of an impact. There is some creative level design here and it never really loses focus.

And it's all downhill from there though I don't have much experience with the Sylvan and Academy campaigns. On the flipside I mostly enjoyed HoF and ToTE.

However the truly bad thing about the H5 campaigns is that you just can't fix Ashan. Ubi's fantasy world is so generic, boring and randomly thrown together that honestly I really hope that if they ever do a H8 they just drop the whole setting and use Axeoth or even Enroth instead (honestly the strongest part of H7 is the freakin' Axeoth campaign so they can do it and they can do it well if they want to). It's not even funny to see how they failed to flesh it all out (guess there was not much to flesh out ) and it's just jarring to compare it with H3's world. In H3 there was not much storytelling going on but the world building NWC managed to accomplish was truly spectacular while H5 tries to hide its empty and shallow world with a story that feels like it was written by a 5 year old. In H3 you did not care that RoE was mostly about "oh God, they messed with our borders, we gotta restore everything" because Antagarich was built up so well that you just believed the conflict and suddenly started caring about Erathia.

I generally agree, however I don't know maybe my standards are a bit too high, not to sound like a snob, but personally I think most of the official Heroes campaigns are **** in comparison to the great fanmade campaigns and scenarios and in that context I reserve a special place in hell for H5 which are worst of all lol

the official campaigns are generally too simple and plain, and although the Chronicles and Heroes 4 have very strong stories, the gameplay is still relatively flat and pedestrian in the scale of things lol

if you play the best Heroes fan campaigns by Corribus, Charles Watkins or Salamandre (among others) you will be spoiled by their incredible stories and rich creativity, it will certainly throw the Heroes 5 official campaigns into an unflattering context to say the least lol

I would love to reach for the stars and try my hand at making a H5 campaign on that level in my spare time, but it is not realistic unless I can purge all of the Ashan rubbish out of the game to achieve a good atmosphere (which alas would require a model editor tool) lol
____________

verriker said:
the official campaigns are generally too simple and plain, and although the Chronicles and Heroes 4 have very strong stories, the gameplay is still relatively flat and pedestrian in the scale of things lol

I think AB and SoD solved that issue quite well. Honestly RoE kinda aged badly but it's not really NWC's fault, the H3 community just matured a lot and eventually went beyond what the base game offers. You can find a lot of fanmade Doom levels that are better than what id Software made back in the day but they spent 1 year making the original levels while the community spent more than 20 years modding Doom, coming up with new designs and significantly better level editors in the process... and it's still a joy to play the original id levels. Doom 1 or RoE are not the pinnacles of what the games offer, they are just the perfect foundations for things that came after them and it's very likely that the better stuff wouldn't exist without them.

As for Chronicles I think it's kind of unfair to compare those campaigns to hardcore ones as Tarnum's stuff was developed with the casual audience in mind and honestly I think that any Chronicles episode is a better introduction to H3 than RoE's first 3 campaigns. Heroes 4 is weird for me on the other hand: I loved the story itself but I hated its method of storytelling. You don't always want to read a fantasy novel while playing a video game... and H4 was a very, VERY long fantasy novel. I also found the premise with the instant armageddon quite bad, I got the feeling that NWC made too many errors in connectint the Heroes and the Might & Magic games and that's why they destroyed Enroth... turns out that's exactly why they did it. I loved the fact that Gelu died though, I hate elves with a passion.